


Does Not Glitter

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [20]
Category: DCU, Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: (between complete weirdos), Arc Welder, Coffee, Earth-3, Evil Genius Lex, Friendship, Gen, Good Genius Alex, Humor, Mirror Universe, SCIENCE!, Sleep Deprivation, Slice of Life, although this fic does contain a billionaire genius working on power armor, except not really, mercy is the worst best minion ever, which is absolutely nothing like an arc reactor, why is that even a tag that is his default identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 05:03:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8954701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: Ultraman being at large is sort of like a major term paper being due yesterday, only with lives on the line and nobody to beg for an extension. Mercy Graves has opinions about her employer's standards of self-care.





	

Alexander Luthor, world-renowned inventor, was perfectly capable of making automated sliding doors that did not hiss or, in fact, make any detectable sound at all. He had done so in the past. If the door that opened onto his personal lab had _malfunctioned_ and begun making such a noise, in a few minutes’ time he could have mended it, and would have done. He had been personally offended by poorly maintained machinery all the way back to the days when he used to spend his weekends doing car repairs for fractions of the prices that licensed mechanics charged, and back then he’d been small enough that he’d had to pester clients and neighbors to help him move the larger engine parts.

So the fact that this particular door _hissed_ open was entirely intentional, built into the structure of the thing out of a workmanlike paranoia that disdained any sort of chime or recorded alert as too easily disabled, and more annoying besides when functioning correctly. The sibilance was just audible through the sizzling buzz of the arc welder.

In the open doorway there stood a tall woman in a sober navy suit, butter-yellow hair scraped viciously back from her forehead into a tight bun, and a triple-sized coffee mug cradled in her hands.

Luthor straightened and made the quarter-turn to face her, shrouded in heavy mask and gloves, sparks fountaining around him bright enough to leave glowing afterimages on an unshielded gaze, and by contrast making the dim laboratory appear dark as a cave. “Mwahahaha!” resounded from behind his blank silver visor, flattened by the barrier into something mechanical, a staccato counterpoint to the hissing of the torch in his hand.

“Ha,” he added for good measure, and then lifted the rod away from the completed weld and shut the table off. Shoved the welding hood up from his face, the better to shoot a grin at the vast portion of coffee. “Ah, you realize my evil genius requires fuel. Thank you, you are a most excellent minion.”

She raised one eyebrow and crossed the threshold, letting the door whisper closed behind her. “I’m not sure you need this after all,” she observed. She had a way of walking briskly without sloshing that always made Alex think simultaneously of soldiers and waitresses. He suspected she had been both, but never asked.

“Of course I do!” The scientist protested, pulling off his protective gloves one after the other and dropping them on his workbench. “This is the endorphin high right before the crash. If you stick around until I’m done drinking it, you can help me test my prototype, here. Of course for the real thing I’m not going to be able to use this kind of weld, I’ll need a plasma arc at least because I’ll be using a tougher alloy, but for the prototype this is faster, especially as I don’t have to bother with shielding gases, and—hey!” He’d made a grab for the mug once his employee came in range, but she wove back on her heels and kept it from him.

“I am seriously reconsidering this mission.” The last time she’d said that, they’d been mobbed by robot ninjas with laser eyes about four seconds later.

Alex took several steps backward and dropped down into his abandoned rolling swivel chair. Even with the heels on her boots she was four centimeters shorter than he was, standing, so he had to sit in order to gaze plaintively up at her. “Mercy,” he cajoled.

She gazed back down, unimpressed. “I am not in the habit of granting my name so easily.”

He was tired enough he might have spent a second baffled by that, since she’d told him her name eighteen months ago before he even hired her, except he’d heard her use that pun before. He glowered. “You’re not fun-ny give me cof-fee.”

“You sound _five._ ”

“I haven’t slept. Which is why I need caffeine. I _can_ go get it myself, if you just brought that in here to taunt me—”

“You need,” she corrected, “to go to bed. Before you set yourself on fire. Again.”

“So you _did_ bring it just to taunt me.”

“Alex.” For the first time her cold expression softened. “Is this project important?”

He rubbed his left eye with the heel of his hand, not caring that it probably completed his resemblance to a sulky toddler. “Appearances aside, I don’t actually stay up for three days in a row just for the hell of it. I’m not an undergrad anymore.” He made another grab for the coffee cup, but she was too fast for him. He didn’t actually pout—he was above _that_ , even at this level of exhaustion—but he suspected his expression communicated a similar sentiment. “You are the worst minion.”

“It says minion nowhere on my contract.”

“PA is business slang for minion, everyone knows that.”

Mercy’s expression was immaculately frosty. “I may have to have harsh words with your dictionary.”

“Pfft.” _Words_ with, haha. Alright, yes, he was exhausted.

Alex rubbed a hand across his forehead, and then back over his scalp, absently massaging some of the worst knots of tension, and looked up, all joking set aside. “He’s out there again, Mercy. You know that. It’s been days already since the breakout. This should have been ready weeks ago, but he was behind bars so I got complacent and let it slide. I need to take advantage of every spare second he gives me before he acts.”

Mercy’s expression didn’t soften, but the coffee had lowered several inches. “And what good will it do to get all this work done, if when he moves you’re too tired to oppose him?”

He grinned. “All the good in the world. After all, I know that so long as I can get an ultimate weapon _built_ , you’ll be there to step up and use it.”

Was better suited to it than he was, a lot of the time. He wasn’t weak, and she wasn’t stupid, but of the two of them she was definitely the muscle. And Ultraman had killed her best friend. Alex would never presume to doubt the fervor of her enmity, nor her willingness to fight. That was why she’d applied for this job, after all. It was half the reason he’d hired her.

Apparently that had been the right thing to say. Eyebrow raised, she gave him the cup, and Alex took a long sip. Ahhh. Just cool enough to drink, and that nice dark vanilla roast. He tried not to get too caught up in all the things he could afford since he had made his proverbial fortune, but good coffee was not to be sniffed at.

“That said, come back in six hours and if I cannot provide a clear explanation for what I need a clear amount of work time _for_ , make me go to bed. Any means necessary. I sign off on it preemptively. My six-hours-later-self has no veto power. Deal?”

Mercy narrowed her eyes. “Deal.” She reached into her blazer pocket, pulled out seven packets of sugar and one of those little hollow plastic coffee stirrers, dropped them on the lab bench on top of his pages of blueprints, and marched out. Alex had no doubt she would be back in six hours to the second. Or sooner, if she decided to oversee the prototype test after all.

He stared after her contemplatively, as he methodically ripped open each of the sugar packets and stirred them into the giant mug.

He’d never offered anyone that kind of preapproved control over him, before. Whether out of a need to assert their authority, or out of misguided confidence that they knew what he needed better than he did, the various guardians foisted on him by the state in his teens had impinged on his autonomy more or less at whim. Which after a childhood under his father’s lackadaisical disinterest had been _most_ unwelcome. His one college girlfriend had arrogated to herself a completely unsubstantiated level of authority over his schedule, and while it had all been thoughtful and well-intentioned, it had also been completely unacceptable. (He hadn’t so much broken up with her as stopped trying _not_ to do things like scribble equations on napkins during dinner or forget to call for a week, until she told him she couldn’t make this work alone and ended it. The whole relationship was categorized with his failed experiments.)

Alex Luthor had never had much patience for other people’s ideas of what he needed. It was part of why he’d never had many friends except the kind he made through work. Building a successful technology company turned out to be good for making that kind of friend, and also to make it considerably harder to tell the difference between people who actually cared about your well-being and people who saw you as a sort of career-creating golden goose. Not that it made much difference, really, since he didn't care to have his decisions made for him even with the best intentions.

Mercy, however, was not thoughtful or well-intentioned. She had the personality of a knife, and he could trust her to place the same value on his capacity to invent and strategize that he did himself, and judge with ruthless practicality whether a thing would or would not serve their mutual goals.

And she kept reminding him that it actually _was_ possible to delegate.

Terrible minion. Excellent friend.

Alex swigged from his liter of coffee, set it aside just out of reach, and got back to work **.**

**Author's Note:**

> Alex is not a bad person, but neither is he well-adjusted. That would be weird. ^^
> 
> Hope was added when Mercy moved from animation into comics, btw; their background was kept carefully vague though they were hinted to be rogue Amazons, which would explain the super-strength at least. Hope was black (so maybe Banu Migdal?) and had enough more of a moral compass than Mercy that she wound up betraying President Luthor because his evil plans were too evil. This did not end well for her.


End file.
